Misbegotten
by death-in-the-orchard
Summary: Integra Hellsing's time - Sir Integra responds to officer Seras Victoria's presence in the Hellsing Organization, and to Alucard's recent failings [based on the original anime].


_For Schinguire who helped me edit this/resurrected this._

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"The girl made the choice on her own?" Sir Integra let the embers consume the leaves of her cigar. The darkness of her office continued to close in upon her, as the sun sank beyond the trees that bordered the Hellsing estate, appearing to her as a forest of pikes goring the sky, as though they were the reason the horizon bled red. The lines in her face steadily deepened, aided by the tinted shadows, while her lips remained pinched, until she could no longer hold back a scowl.

The expression disappeared with the gloom as the door opened; Walter's hand lingered on the light switch until she turned away from the window. Integra let him arrange her evening tea tray on the desk, her chair facing it at a wide angle. She listened to the soft clatters and tinks while she stared at the portrait of Arthur Hellsing that hung on the far wall. There was a click and the portrait brightened further. Walter had turned on her desk lamp.

Integra's speech was slow, heavy with deliberation, as though she was barely able to take herself from the thoughts that consumed her, "Thank you, Walter. I won't be needing anything else for the rest of the evening."

As he made his departure, she instructed him to turn off the main light. He did so. Now the only light in the Hellsing office came from the moon, shining through the uncovered window behind her, from the remnants of color that tinted the night sky, and from the small desk lamp.

She continued to stare at the wall, where her father's portrait hung.

Her musings meandered down darkening paths.

Yes. Company A would take care of Alucard's misbegotten fledgling. Regardless of the tragic nature of Company A's recent losses, these losses had been due to human error, not to the predictable failings of an untrained whelp of a vampire. None had expected a half-starved, fledgling monster to protect the life of its commanding officer and the lives of its…

No. Hellsing's men had never been that thing's comrades. If they died, she, Integra Hellsing, alone bore the pain of their loss, as well as the responsibility. The new thing her slave had fledged could not comprehend the loss of life, though it might mope about, as though it still bore human feeling. It wasn't a girl, a child, any longer. It had no more humanity than the chair she sat in, the cup she drank out of, the paper she wrote on, shredded, or left crumpled in a waste basket. Any semblance to feeling the thing might have was mere illusion. Bare the open cavity of a man with a beating heart, and the thing that claimed to be human, pretended to be human – thought itself to be human - would salivate and yearn for the pulsating organ, and its juices. The fledgling would not recoil in horror. It would not empathize with the suffering of a human being.

But of course monsters lacked the capacity to feel and understand what she, a human being, felt and understood. Why should any monster understand these things? The dead are not responsible for the living. And the living have no choice but to deal with the living dead as they see fit, else surrender themselves as fuel for their unholy existence.

"'The Lord gives us gifts to fight inhuman demons.'"

Integra's chin lifted at the sound of Alucard's voice, but she did not turn to give him the undue privilege of her gaze. However, the pentagram on his gloved hand came into view, and her head turned minimally to watch. He was reaching for her desk lamp.

"Stop."

The hand froze, poised and unnaturally still.

After some time, Alucard's hand twitched. Another pause followed, and slowly the hand retracted. But Sir Integra's glare remained as she spoke with an edge of bitterness in the hardened tone she used with her slave, "And do not speak of the Lord, demon. A vampire has no business speaking of God or His will, or of His gifts."

His dark chuckle deepened the lines in her face. Alucard's fangs reflected the light of the desk lamp, as he spoke, "I was merely quoting the Catholic."

Integra scoffed without smiling, "The same Catholic who humiliated you three days ago?"

She paused for a time, and smirked when she failed to hear the chuckle repeated. But the shameful recollection killed her own smile. Her scowl resumed, "Your performance was disgraceful, Alucard. I expect nothing from that young thing you fledged, a liberty you had no right to, just as you have no right to _anything_. But, that performance of yours…" It was as though she had no words for her disappointment.

There was a short span of quiet. "The Police Girl will drink-"

Her sound of disgust caused the Vampire Alucard to pause. Integra seemed to fume at the wall, a blank wall. She did eventually look to the wall that displayed her father's portrait. But she looked away from it again.

The vampire spoke, "What shame should you bear for having a second vampire to serve you?" His expression remained devoid of feeling, while her look, at that moment, bordered on loathing.

"You took a liberty."

Alucard's lips formed a note of recognition, but issued no sound. He closed them and mused, as Integra returned to her pensive contemplation of the empty wall. He began in a low tone, "You are ashamed of my actions-"

" _I_ am responsible for the actions of my slave!" she barked, turning upon him sharply. " _I_ am responsible for any failed command, any broken rule, any hint of insubordination or of inferiority!" Integra was too heated to continue, and took the time to settle back against her chair, gripping the armrest until her knuckles shone white. Her hands seemed welded to the armrests. Her throat felt dry as the vessels in her brain pulsed.

Her lips bent with bitter self reproach. Control. If she could not command herself, she would be unfit to command the Vampire Alucard. Exhaling with deliberate calm, Integra unclenched her jaws, and gradually, painfully, the muscles in her hands relaxed and she was able to peel her throbbing fingers from the chair. She reached for the tea Walter had prepared for her. But when it finally passed her lips, it was lukewarm.

She set the tea aside, and gave it up entirely as she fought to ignore the throbbing in her hands. Integra found her eyes fixed upon the Vampire Alucard's shadowed face. His burning gaze had remained on her, though she had not felt it. But staring into those eyes, a faint sense of doubt, of wavering, touched her thoughts. She severed the tainted flicker of feeling immediately, and had it been tangible, would have ground it beneath the heel of her shoe.

Nonsense. Her nostrils flared, as her look narrowed. "What have you to say? Do you have any explanation to offer me? Alucard. Why tempt a child with damnation, and then bring her demonic carcass into Hellsing? No more than deadweight, nothing but a liability. Did you think this shameful thing you've brought into being would please me? Did you think that I would want her? What need had I for an incompetent whelp like that? Did you _think,_ at all, before you acted? What, Alucard, what?" She demanded at last, her temper blazing as her vampire shifted as though with impatience.

"The Police Girl will be as useful as any of your human soldiers, given time."

Nearly savage with impatience, Integra found herself shouting despite her attempt to keep calm, "Given time! Time! I don't want that creature in my home, Alucard. I do not want that creature bearing the crest of my family! I wish it had never come into being. God _damn_ it, you wretched, _stupid-_ " An unintelligible groan brought her head into her hand, and she fell silent. Her grip was hard, her expression pinched as she resumed, "It is a disgrace. It has brought me and my Organization shame. _You_ have done this. How? I don't know. I don't like that I don't know how you managed to do it. How? Tell me how it was done, and then why. For god's sake, why would you ever conceive of making such a revolting creature?"

The silence rung, as though something had been shattered the moment before. Integra waited. She saw no chance of the vampire refusing to respond, not if he intended to preserve his vampiric pride.

"The conditions were perfect, my mood…" he trailed off, as though retracting his words, something the demon rarely did in Integra's experience. He sighed, long, and yet shallowly. The hairs on Integra's arms rose as the temperature plummeted.

"Enough of that, Alucard," she snapped, like the crack of a whip. "Give me my explanation, Vampire. You have one. You must. Because I demand it."

Alucard's eyes twitched, as though he would have scowled in her presence if he'd dared. "The conditions and my mood were such that, when the girl chose to become one of the undead and to join the night, to forsake the living and daylight-"

"Enough with your pretty poetry, Alucard. I can't stand gratuitous dribble."

This time the pause showed the vampire had taken offense. The offense seemed to grow as Integra showed no signs of caring. "Miss Hellsing," Alucard did not adjust his tone as her look sharpened, "I will spare you my 'poetry', and wish you goodnight."

Sitting upright, Integra growled, "Alright. Give me poetry. Give me something, Alucard. Something. Help me to make sense of all this. Heed my order, and I promise you, it will benefit us both."

His brow rose, as she stared at him, unflinching. "So, you ask me to spare myself your ire, and to relieve you of this tension, this obsession you have with the girl." Alucard stepped back into the encroaching shadows, and was immediately swallowed into their obscurity. But Integra continued to feel his presence, and was not perturbed. A shift was needed, and she gave him all the time he required to make this shift. He reappeared in front of her desk. She turned to watch him.

"She made the decision to join the undead. I did not make that decision for her. Yes, I enabled her descent. I was the means of her fall, and of the loss of her soul. Likely, she did not understand all of the implications that came with this transformation, but… that is the case for nearly all thinking beings. Especially humans, given that so few fully understand what they value most, or what they require to sustain who they are, until they look upon what can no longer be retrieved, and are, themselves, irreversibly altered. For that reason, vampires should understand what they have lost - though, so few seem to care these days. Neither know nor care - they are trash.

"My previous masters would have been upset by what has happened, with my bringing another creature like myself into the night - into their home. But you have made use of the girl, while they would have burned her, destroyed her, and sewn the earth with her ashes, though this would have left it barren. You were practical, and showed me some… you perhaps humored me, or were curious to see what would come of it, what my intentions might have been."

"What are your intentions, Alucard?" Integra asked calmly, her voice deep.

He stared down at her from the gloom that had swallowed the wall behind him, the dark contrast brightening his demonic gaze. "I have none. I intend to do nothing."

"Have you offered her your blood?"

There was a visible movement in the vampire's manner and posture, not quite a start, but a betrayal of something he evidently had not intended her to guess. Integra's irritation was cooled as she went on, "You have tried to free her. What do you see that accomplishing? Do you mean to allow her to awaken and serve Hellsing willingly, as a legitimate senior officer and not as the fledgling of the Vampire Alucard?"

"I intend to do nothing. I intend for her to drink my blood, and so evolve from the undeveloped creature that she is, into a true vampire. I want to see a true vampire, I am disgusted with the trash who sell their souls and know not what to do with the damnation they have purchased. The circumstances were right. My options, my opportunities, are limited - as you can imagine. I did not choose the girl out of a million. I was presented with a possibility- a single possibility, and I simply neglected to let that possibility pass me by.

"I do not see it as taking a liberty. I have no liberty, you know that best of all, my Master. You grant me little in terms of agency. But here, I acted. By my own accord, at my own incentive, I acted. Master, I acted for myself, without any thought of attacking, offending, or jeopardizing Hellsing. Should she awaken, and should the seal fail to bind her, you would order me to dispatch her. And, obediently, and without hesitation, I would carry out your order."

"You would kill her, without hesitation?" Integra held her mouth as she viewed her demon in the stagnant half-light. The darkness seemed to deepen behind him.

"Of course. Why should I hesitate? When have I been known to hesitate?"

She remained unchanged for a time, and then spoke, "Call her here, Alucard. And shoot her. You can choose whether the shot will be lethal."


End file.
